Banks disburse 40.35pc agri loans in five months

Specialised, state-owned and private commercial banks, including foreign commercial banks operating in the country, have already disbursed 40.35 per cent agriculture and non-farm rural credit in past five months from July to November 2017, reports BSS.
The scheduled banks have disbursed a total of Tk 82.311 billion (Tk 8,230.88 crore) till November while the target is Tk 204 billion (Tk 20,400 crore) for the current fiscal year 2017-18, central bank sources said.
Foreign and private commercial banks have shown better performance than the public banks during the period.
State-owned and specialised banks have disbursed 34.63 per cent loans of their total target while foreign and private commercial banks have disbursed 45.42 per cent of their target.
Six state-owned commercial banks - Agrani, Janata, Rupali, Sonali, BASIC and BDBL, and two state-owned specialised banks - Bangladesh Krishi Bank and RAKUB have disbursed Tk 33.211 billion (Tk 3,321.17 crore) while their target was Tk 95.9 billion (Tk 9,590 crore).
But the foreign and private commercial banks have disbursed Tk 49.097 billion (Tk 4,909.71 crore) of their target of Tk 108.10 billion (Tk 10,810 crore).
Earlier, Bangladesh Bank's Executive Director Subhankar Saha said the banks have been able to exceed the agriculture loan disbursement target in the last couple of years due to the central bank's strict monitoring over the firm loan disbursement trend of the schedule banks.
Every month, Bangladesh Bank (BB) holds a meeting with scheduled banks to expedite agriculture loan disbursement activities, he added.
BB's disbursement target was Tk 145.95 billion (Tk 14,595 crore) for 2013-14 fiscal year, but the disbursement surpassed the target and stood at Tk 160.37 billion (Tk 16,037 crore).
Fiscal years 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 also followed the similar trend with disbursement of Tk 159.78 billion (Tk 15,978 crore), Tk 176.46 billion Tk 17,646 crore) and Tk 209.987 billion (Tk 20,998.70 crore) against the targets of Tk 155.50 billion (Tk 15,550 crore), Tk 164 billion (Tk 16,400 crore) and Tk 175.50 billion (Tk 17,550 crore) respectively.